Google manipulates its search results in a way that hurts both
its competitors and its users, according to a
new research paperfrom prominent law professor
and Internet scholar, Tim Wu and funded by Google critic
Yelp.

The study claims that when Google privileges its
own content over the "organic" results its search algorithm
picks, as in the case of restaurant reviews, it actually reduces
“social welfare.”

To study this, the researchers set up a browser plug-in
that mimicked Google’s organic search page without “OneBox,” the
map and listings widget which foists Google’s own local listings
on certain searches. They then put the actual top search results
in OneBox’s place for half their test subjects. After analyzing
the behavior of 2,690 subjects, they found users were 45% more
likely to click on the organic search results than on Google’s
promoted links.

These results go directly against Google’s party line,
which is that it promotes its own content in order to provide
better search results. The study admits this can be true in
certain cases, such as when Google displays the time, or has a
calculator pop up to help you do multiplication. But when users
are clicking on the organic links 45% more, it’s hard to argue
the promoted links are providing more benefit. And the paper
makes a strong case that consumers prefer “competitive
results.”

“The main surprising and shocking realization is that
Google is not presenting its best product,” Wutold Re/Code. “In fact, it’s presenting a
version of the product that’s degraded and intentionally worse
for consumers.”

The study was funded by consumer
reviews website Yelp, which has filed a complaint about Google's
practices to Europan antitrust regulators.

This isn’t the first time Yelp and Google have been at odds over
search results. Last year, documents
uncovered by TechCrunch revealed Yelp executives believed
Google was siphoning off up to 20% of clicks from search
traffic that should have been Yelp’s. The documents showed that
Google was inserting links to its own products above Yelp’s, even
when the original search results explicitly included the word
“Yelp.” However these documents also admitted that Google’s
practices overall haven’t hurt Yelp’s traffic.

Yelp

But for Wu, it’s not as much about the raw traffic numbers
as it is about the effect on the consumer.“It's a
legal exercise of monopoly if it hurts competitors while helping
consumers, but if it hurts consumers while also hurting
competitors, then there is no justification for the
conduct,”he told Bloomberg.

A Google spokesperson responded to the study:

"This isn't new - Yelp's been making these arguments to
regulators, and demanding higher placement in search results, for
the past five years. This latest study is based on a flawed
methodology that focuses on results for just a handful of
cherry-picked queries. At Google we focus on trying to provide
the best results for our users."